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Smooth Coastlines and Concentric Coastal Rings

A few people have expressed interest in the way I do my coastlines and those concentric rings around the coastlines, so here's a mini-tutorial for just that. It was done in Photoshop CS6, but it should be no trouble to use it in any other version of photoshop.

Of course if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I hope this is of some use to folks.

Because I saw this before I registered, I did not ever end up saying anything at the time. But.

This is why I'm here.

I *knew* I couldn't draw a map, because every attempt looked wrong. I've watched videos, and tbh, it just looks like they are working magic. This was perfect. It was clear and concise, and I was able to easily follow each step.

This tut made me feel like I might actually be able to map my world at some point.

An addendum to the tut: One thing I forgot that can neaten things up down the road is this.

After Step 7 (when you delete all the land that isn't inside the line box), you can take your Eraser tool and erase the strip of land/white area that runs all the way around UNDERNEATH the line box. That way, when you set up your concentric rings in the next step, you won't have rings around the outside of the map. Just be careful to ONLY erase the parts that are over the water areas, not the landmasses themselves.

Sorry about not including that originally; that's what happens when you rush through something. Well, that and typos.

I did it with a hard brush but it looked all pixely. So then I did it with the paintbrush (size 2, hard circle brush.) I can't do step 4 because it can't fill in the outer area and look good at the same time. I can just fill the entire ocean layer, but then the land is the same color as well.

Stalker: Did you create the ocean layer under the coastline layer? Then, when you used your Paint Bucket tool to fill in that layer, make sure those three little boxes at the top of the screen (Anti-alias, Contiguous, All layers) are all checked. That might be where the problem is; I know different versions of photoshop handle those boxes and their effects differently. I would say play around with the settings there until you get something you like where only the ocean is filled, not the land. Always keep the Anti-alias box checked though, because that smooths out the edge transition and keeps it from pixellating.